In the Heat of the Moment (Sandhamn Murders Book 5)

by Viveca Sten

  “We’re almost there,” he said, hoping to placate Kalle as he kept checking out the pretty girl with the child. She was wearing a tight patterned top and white shorts. Nice breasts.

  Kalle had bought the tickets and handed one to Erik. At last, it was their turn, and they stepped ashore onto the gray concrete quayside. To the left was the kiosk and straight ahead was a clothing store with a colorful window display and pots of flowers outside. The sign above the door said “The Summer Store” in ornate lettering. Several children clutching ice cream cones were hanging around the kiosk.

  “Where do you think we should start?” Erik asked Kalle as he unzipped his thin blue jacket. Kalle had just put on a pair of black sunglasses; with his cropped hair he looked like a hard-boiled detective from some American cop show.

  “How about the scene of the crime?”

  He really was as laconic as those characters on TV, Erik thought, putting on his own sunglasses. “Fine,” he said.

  This wasn’t the first time they’d had to conduct door-to-door inquiries on Sandhamn, and Erik knew from experience that the absence of street names didn’t make life any easier. The only clues to location on the island were local designations that didn’t appear on any map. People lived “in the west” or “up north” or “by Oxudden.” It was impossible for a visitor and comprehensible only to those who had been there since childhood. It almost drove him crazy the first time he was involved in an investigation on Sandhamn. In addition, the only permissible forms of transport were bicycles or shank’s mare. All unnecessary motorized traffic was banned; only the odd quad bike, tractor, or jeep could be seen in the village.

  “We might as well walk,” he said. “There’s no point in waiting for the bus.”

  They set off for Skärkarlshamn at a brisk pace, and after only ten minutes, they reached the cordoned-off area. There was no longer an officer on duty, and a sense of desolation hung in the air.

  A few windsurfers were enjoying themselves at the other end of the shore, taking care to keep their distance.

  The two colleagues ducked underneath the blue-and-white tape and went over to where the body had been found. They stopped in front of the alder, and Erik looked around. He had studied the photographs at the morning briefing, but that wasn’t the same as actually being on the scene.

  Forensics had already done what they needed to do, so there was no need to worry about contaminating evidence, but Erik still moved cautiously. It was always possible that something might need to be checked at a later stage.

  Slowly he took in the sun-drenched surroundings. Thomas had said the area was hidden from view, but only now did Erik realize how isolated it was.

  Skärkarlshamn curved in a semicircle, but at this point, the bay formed a sharp bend that couldn’t be seen from the rest of the shore when you stood behind the tree; its branches were so low that they brushed against the vegetation on the ground.

  Erik pushed them aside to see exactly where Victor had been lying. The greenery was still flattened; Erik knelt down and studied the surface. It was easy to distinguish the outline of the body.

  When he straightened up, he caught a glimpse of something through the trees, in the opposite direction.

  Thomas had said that the nearest property had been empty when he was there, but now someone was moving around the yard, and the white shutters were pushed wide open. Hadn’t Thomas said they were closed the previous day?

  Kalle had gone around the other side of the tree and was examining a jagged rock sticking up out of the ground not far from the shore. The fast walk must have raised his temperature; he had taken off his jacket, and patches of sweat were visible on the back of his striped polo shirt.

  “Hey.” Erik gestured toward the house. “I think the owners are back. Let’s go and have a word with them.”

  CHAPTER 52

  Erik and Kalle made their way over to the fence and searched in vain for a gate. Eventually they realized that the fence stopped a yard or so from the shore; there were piles of washed-up brown seaweed around the last post.

  As they got closer, Erik could see that there were several vacation cottages on the property as well as the main house, which had a huge panorama window overlooking the sea. A tall, sinewy woman in her sixties was repotting a pelargonium on the wooden deck in front of the house. Her roomy shorts were streaked with dirt, and she was wearing gardening gloves.

  “Hello,” Erik called out, taking off his sunglasses.

  The woman gave a start and dropped the plant.

  “Nothing to worry about,” he added hastily. “Police. We’d just like a little chat if that’s OK.”

  The woman put down the pot on a garden table and came down the wide steps. She wiped the sweat from her forehead and managed to get soil in her hair. Erik and Kalle introduced themselves and showed their ID.

  “Ann-Sofie Carlén,” she said, taking off one of her gloves before offering her hand. “I don’t understand why you’re here. I haven’t made a report this year.” She folded her arms. “I mean one ought to, of course. The way people behave just gets worse and worse, and no one takes you seriously unless you really push it. The amount of resources the police dedicate to the problem is an absolute disgrace.”

  They hadn’t even stated their business, and she was already complaining. Kalle frowned, but Erik decided to turn on the charm.

  “Are you the owner of this place?” he said with a winning smile. “It’s really beautiful. What an amazing view!”

  Ann-Sofie beamed at him. “I know! We’ve been here for a few years now, my husband and I, but it’s taken a fair amount of renovation.”

  “Is your husband here?” Erik asked, still smiling.

  “No, he’s gone to the village to do some shopping. Our grandchildren are coming to visit.” Ann-Sofie’s pride was unmistakable. “We have two daughters,” she continued eagerly. “They both have children, and our eldest is coming over this afternoon with her girls.” She pointed to the shore and a narrow strip of pale sand alongside the jetty from which the seaweed had been cleared. “They love playing down there.”

  Kalle cleared his throat with such force that Erik could see his Adam’s apple moving. “We have a few questions regarding the events that took place over the Midsummer weekend,” Kalle said.

  “I’m not surprised!” Ann-Sofie exclaimed. “Look at the state of this place! There’s trash everywhere, and the council does nothing; it’s disgusting.” She stopped to catch her breath. “And what’s with the police cordon? What’s going on out here?” Her expression changed from indignation to suspicion. “Maybe you two can tell me?”

  It was obvious that Ann-Sofie hadn’t heard about the death in Skärkarlshamn. Erik had seen the news in the morning papers, but they hadn’t made as big a splash as the police had feared. A serious traffic accident in Dalarna, with several fatalities and many people injured, had dominated the headlines. The front pages had been filled with articles about the dangers of driving at Midsummer, with close-ups of what the journalists had dubbed “the highway to hell.”

  “There’s been a death on the island,” he said.

  “What?” Ann-Sofie was shocked.

  “A young man died on the shore over the weekend,” Kalle explained. “On Midsummer’s Day, in fact. That’s why the area is cordoned off. We’re trying to establish whether anyone in the neighborhood saw or heard anything.”

  “How terrible,” Ann-Sofie said, with equal measure of horror and curiosity in her voice. “Was it a local resident?”

  Kalle waved his hand dismissively. “No, it was someone who’d come over by boat.”

  Ann-Sofie’s chin lifted a fraction. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised, given the way people carry on at Midsummer. It was only a matter of time before something dreadful happened. I assume he was drunk?”

  Erik decided to ignore the question. “We’re wondering if anyone was home on the day in question and might have noticed something?”

  “I’m afraid not
,” Ann-Sofie said, shaking her head. “We’ve been away all weekend. We only got back this morning.”

  “We’re looking for witnesses who might have seen something from seven o’clock on Saturday evening,” Kalle said patiently. “You didn’t have any guests staying here?” He inclined his head in the direction of the cottages, which seemed big enough to accommodate a couple of families.

  “I’m sorry; as I said, we haven’t been here. We always go away over Midsummer; it’s just too noisy on the island. I wouldn’t dare step outside my own yard with all those drunks camping and lighting fires in the forest.”

  The Carléns’ property was the only one with a clear view of the scene of the crime, and Erik wanted to be absolutely sure he’d covered all the bases. “So there was definitely no one at all here over the weekend?”

  Ann-Sofie had pushed her sunglasses up onto the top of her head. She took her time readjusting them on the bridge of her nose before she answered. “That’s what I said.”

  She pulled on her gardening glove as if she were suddenly in a hurry. “You must excuse me. I have a great deal to do before my grandchildren arrive.”

  Erik glanced at Kalle. Was she hiding something?

  Kalle moved closer to Ann-Sofie; he was almost a foot taller. “This is a police matter,” he said in an icy tone. “A young man has lost his life. If someone was staying here over the weekend, then we need to know about it.”

  Ann-Sofie seemed flustered. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again. Erik had a strong feeling that she had something on her mind.

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you,” she said, turning away and heading back to the house.

  Erik strode after her. “If you have information that could be relevant to our investigation, you really need to tell us.”

  Ann-Sofie stopped and slowly turned around. “I don’t know if this is of any significance, but it seems as if someone’s been in one of the cottages.”

  “What makes you think that?” Erik made an effort to sound as pleasant as possible; Kalle had been a little too curt. “Has there been a break-in?”

  “No, but it smelled weird when I went in.” She grimaced. “Disgusting, actually. I’d gone to get the place ready for my daughter. The bedclothes were a mess, too; they don’t usually look like that.” She pursed her lips, no doubt regretting that she’d said anything. “It’s probably nothing. And I don’t want to get mixed up in any trouble.”

  “Could we take a look?” Erik asked.

  Ann-Sofie had moved toward the steps. “If you like,” she said. “But I’ve already given it a good cleaning; it’s all neat and tidy now, and the smell is gone, thank goodness.”

  CHAPTER 53

  Thomas called Oscar-Henrik Sachsen. As he was waiting for the forensic pathologist to answer, he tipped his chair back so that it was brushing against the bookshelf. When the afternoon sun was at its height, the room became unbearably warm, but so far he still had some shade.

  “Hello,” came the eventual response.

  Was it Oscar-Henrik? He sounded as if he had a mouthful of porridge.

  “What are you doing?” Thomas asked.

  “Chewing. I’m in the staff room. We decided to have a slice of apple cake when we’d finished. Is there a law against that?”

  “No, no. So have you had a chance to look at Victor Ekengreen?”

  “Mmm. Don’t worry, we examined your boy this morning. We’ll get around to the paperwork later.”

  “Much appreciated,” Thomas said. “What can you tell me?”

  “The cause of death was a massive blunt force trauma to the head. He has contusions everywhere, a fractured skull, brain damage as a result of the trauma, plus bleeding in the cerebral membranes. Death must have been pretty much instantaneous. To put it simply, there wasn’t much left when the perpetrator finished with him.”

  “Can you outline the course of events?”

  “Someone battered this young man on the head with a round, hard object.”

  “Could it be the kind of large, smooth stone you find on the shore?” Thomas asked immediately, thinking back to the shoreline at Skärkarlshamn.

  “That’s not impossible, in view of the indentation.”

  It was as Thomas had suspected, which meant the killer had probably acted on the spur of the moment.

  “There were other head wounds,” he said.

  “True, but the earlier injuries wouldn’t have been fatal. The one to the temple is neither particularly deep nor dangerous. It just looks bad, as that kind of wound often does.”

  “Would that blow have been enough to render him unconscious?” Thomas said.

  “Possibly, but only for a short time. My guess is that he would have been dazed rather than knocked out. If nothing else had happened, he would have been fine within a short time.”

  Thomas tried to piece together the puzzle. “So Victor Ekengreen falls or is pushed over and hits his head on the rocky ground. That gives him a bleeding wound on the temple, and he ends up either unconscious or groggy.”

  “Exactly.”

  Now it sounded as if Sachsen was loading the dishwasher; Thomas could hear crockery clinking against metal in the background.

  “I’ve gone through the photographs from the scene, and the superficial wound could well have been caused by the rock where traces of blood were found. The surface and the jagged edge match the physical injury,” Sachsen went on.

  “But you’re saying that something else occurred that led to his death,” Thomas said.

  “Precisely.”

  “Are we talking about a fight?”

  “More than likely. There are abrasions on his face. Not deep, admittedly, but they are there. There are also contusions on his upper arm, as if someone has grabbed hold of him with a certain amount of force, plus a contusion in the middle of his chest.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “It’s up to you to figure that out.” Sachsen fell silent for a moment, then went on: “But how about this: the first injury could have been inflicted by accident; the subsequent blows were not. It would have taken at least two blows to cause Victor Ekengreen’s death, possibly three.”

  Homicide, then. Was it deliberate?

  “Can you tell me anything about the perpetrator?” Thomas asked.

  “Someone pretty strong; the skull is badly damaged.”

  Thomas pictured Ebba and Felicia. Neither girl was much over five feet four, and both were slim, with weak wrists. Everything pointed to a man, but in desperate situations, women were capable of more than you might think.

  “Is it possible to figure out the angle from which the blows were delivered?”

  “That’s tricky,” Sachsen said, “but I think the victim was face-to-face with his killer. The stone, if it was a stone, struck him at an angle behind the right ear. It looks as if it came from the side; so the two of them could have been lying down.”

  “The right ear,” Thomas repeated. “That means the killer would have been holding the stone in his left hand, if they were facing each other?”

  “Correct.”

  Left-handed? Thomas jotted down in his notebook. He tried to imagine the scene; had Victor been too dazed to defend himself after the initial attack? How long had it taken the perpetrator to find a big enough stone with which to kill him?

  A firm grip, a raised arm, a fatal blow, followed by several more. That was all it took.

  “Anything else?” Thomas asked, glancing at his watch. He was due to meet Margit in five minutes, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he were late.

  “Yes, actually.” Sachsen cleared his throat. “The chemical analysis isn’t ready yet, as you know; it will take a while before the National Forensic Laboratory gets back to me. However, I have found something else that I believe will be of interest to you.”

  “Yes?”

  “It appears that your victim had been using drugs for a considerable amount of time. Cocaine, to be more specific. I
found faint traces of white powder in his nasal cavity, and there are corroded patches of skin inside. It’s virtually invisible to the naked eye, but the septum has definitely been affected. In addition, there is significant pooling of both blood and fluid in the lungs, so it’s possible that he’d taken something else as well, although I can’t say what that might be until I hear from the lab.”

  “Cocaine,” Thomas repeated as he absorbed this fresh information.

  Victor Ekengreen had been using drugs. Nobody had mentioned that during the interviews.

  CHAPTER 54

  Margit was at her desk, peeling a slightly overripe banana, when Thomas arrived in her office.

  “I’ve just spoken to Sachsen,” he said. “He carried out the autopsy this morning.”

  “Excellent. What did he tell you?”

  Thomas sat down and summarized the conversation. “So all the indications are that Victor was killed deliberately,” he concluded. “It’s impossible to interpret Sachsen’s findings in any other way.”

  “As we suspected, in other words.”

  “There’s something else,” Thomas went on. “According to Sachsen, Victor had taken cocaine before he died.”

  Margit put down the banana. “He was only sixteen, for God’s sake. That’s early to start on cocaine, particularly in view of his affluent background.”

  “I would have thought it was particularly prevalent in the posh suburbs.” Thomas couldn’t help himself, but he smiled to take the sting out of his words.

  Margit chose to ignore the comment. “Cocaine . . . that’s a party drug.”

  “But it can also make users aggressive, especially if they take it often, combined with alcohol,” Thomas said. “Victor had been knocking back vodka all day—the others all said so. According to Tobbe, Victor was pretty far gone.”

  “He just failed to mention there was something else involved,” Margit said, drumming her fingers on the desk. “Booze and drugs are a brilliant combination.”